Especially that last one. Every time you sit down at a Starbucks, a public library, or anywhere with a publicly available wireless network, there could be someone listening in on your wireless transmissions. It doesn’t require much knowhow to pull off either.

Note this matters even more when you log in to websites that aren’t using a secure connection (http://). Your credentials transmit in plain text. That should scare you.

After training for almost 4 months, this morning I ran my first (and probably only) half marathon at the Lake Sammamish Half. My realistic goal was to get under two hours, with my “wishful goal” being under 1:45. I’m proud to say I ran it in a few seconds over 1:44, achieving both of my goals.

To train, I used Hal Higdon’s guide for novices, and I recommend it as a reasonable way to get prepared for a half. Unfortunately, I had been too busy to do the long runs on weekends for the past three weeks, so I was a little worried going into this half. This probably made the last few miles harder than they should have been.

I stuck to a pace between 8:30 and 8:50 per mile in training, but I managed to hold just under 8:00 per mile for the real event. The first few miles are always a little rough, but once I warmed up around mile 5 or 6 autopilot kicked in and the miles just racked up.

Getting to 10 miles felt good, since that meant double digits. But after 11 miles, everything became infinitely harder. Mile 12 was almost all a zigzag through a park, and it was absolute torture to keep running back and forth next to people ahead of you. The last 2 miles or so felt like they took an eternity. I think the middle 60% of the distance went by the easiest.

How far 13.1 miles really is didn’t kick in until the shuttle ride back from the finish to the start. The bus drove back on a lot of the running route, and the time it took the bus to get back really emphasized how far we had ran.

I just wanted to finish and get a time I was happy with, and I accomplished both these goals. I can say I’ve ran a half marathon in under 1:45 and had fun doing it, but it’s hard to say I would want to do it again.

The exterminator came by a few days after I first discovered the rat’s presence to assess the situation and leave some traps out, baited with peanut butter but not primed. Since some of my own lesser quality traps had gone off without catching anything, he opined that the rat may have became “bait shy,” so the first priority was to retrain it in thinking the peanut butter was safe to go after.

A few days later, after some of the traps had been licked clean, the exterminator returned to put more peanut butter out and prime the traps. This whole time I had been keeping food and plants out of the rat’s reach (apparently rats can have a 36 inch vertical2, so this wasn’t that easy), and spent my nights sleeping with towels stuffed under my bedroom doors.

Then, it finally happened. Around two or three in the morning, a loud snapping sound woke me up, followed by the sound of something bulky and solid tumbling around in the room directly above me. It didn’t stop on its own, so I eventually went up to see what the commotion was. This is what I found:

Despite its neck being caught in the trap, it was still very much alive, squealing and struggling to break free. Not wanting to deal with this at three in the morning, I put a bucket over the trapped rat, then stacked some textbooks on top of the bucket, then put a suitcase on top of the textbooks. Somehow, I still wondered if it would get out.

I didn’t have time to deal with the situation in the morning, so fast forward to 16 hours later when I’m finally at home with some time to take care of the rat. I took the suitcase, textbooks, and bucket off and found the rat was still alive. Not just barely alive, but as alive as it was at 3 AM. In fact, I’m not sure if that above video was from that morning or evening.

I had already called the exterminator, and he came by to take the rat and remaining traps away. He looked around and concluded that was very likely the only rat in the house, so it appears my saga has finally come to an end.